Pistol dmg change
Cygone
Join Date: 2011-05-29 Member: 101528Members
Join Date: 2011-05-29 Member: 101528Members
Comments
*edit* nvm weapons 1 vs no carapace leaves a skulk at 1 hp
Wheeee: is the 1 hp if they're standing on infestation? I'm thinking the passive regen might... well, I guess 2 shots go off too fast for that to kick in.
Wheeee: is the 1 hp if they're standing on infestation? I'm thinking the passive regen might... well, I guess 2 shots go off too fast for that to kick in.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No 3 hits. WP 1 Alt-Pistol does 44 DMG skulk has a total of 90 hp with A 0. ( 1 armor absorbs 4 light dmgpoints)
But its faster when you use primary mode it deals 28 dmg so its a 4 hit kill then but it is faster.
<!--quoteo(post=1879402:date=Oct 11 2011, 08:51 PM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Oct 11 2011, 08:51 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1879402"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It means it's worse against fades but better against skulks. As if marines needed to be better against skulks.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Alot weaker! If marines have weapons 3 the Alt-attack does 52 dmg and a fade with Armor 3 has a total of 800hp (Light:Every armor point of the target will absorb 4 points of damage) . So with 16 shots he is gone. And you would need 25 shots with primary-mode to kill a fade.
Compared to the old heavy model.
15 shots out of primary-mode and 9 for the alternate-mode ( WP 3 and A 3)
Normal damage wouldn't change much. You would need 16 and 10 shots with the new dmg values.
Now the Marines lack on a good ranged weapon. Those changes dropped the power of the pistol to almOst 60% of the old model. An alt shot out of it with WP 3 are blocked by just 13 Armor.
So its is just 1 shot weaker.
It all sounded good on paper for light damage for the pistol, but i think it really needs to be re-considered.
now the pistol is the opposite: it deals LIGHT damage, that means once you ran out of ammo with your primary weapon, switch to pistol since the target most likely will already have less or no armor -> more damage.
most people will feel this change as a buff to the pistol, since they used the pistol anyway as a last resort (which was actually a bad choice before build 187) on targets with no or less armor.
I would prefer another way to do it, yes, but it did give the pistol some utility in the late game, as well as being just about the only remotely useful marine weapon against the fade.
The change only makes the pistol more stupid at the start, and more useless at the end. It's not improving anything on its own.
The good side is it takes much longer to snipe cysts with pistol and this is good.
Maybe puncture DMG with the old number could be something. It could force the pistol to an allrounder (maybe only for alt mode).
Also if I have an LMG and no more ammo it is way more effective kicking the alien with the LMG than switching to the Pistol (ok that counts not for the Fade). Reason is with 50 LMG bullets you kill any alien even if you have weapons 0 and the aliens armor 3 if you did not you're, 90% of the time, in close combat so slow switching to the pistol is often the wrong choice.
For the other guns you have no other choice.
And a last point. To be a finishee you should have a chance to switch to the pistol and shoot, but often till you switched to the pistol the kharaa are gone. So it needs a faster switching.
As a starter it doesn't need to be faster.
Primary Fire is Light Damage, Secondary is Heavy
Primary Fire is Light Damage, Secondary is Heavy<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
+1
Can't we at least make it normal damage, so its not completely useless against fades that have armor. Lets say a full pistol clip would do 250 damage, at normal damage that would mean a full pistol clip would do 125 damage to a fade's armor. That's assuming a fade would allow you to pump a full pistol mag into him, and lets be honest, most encounters with fades happen well after fades have gotten armor 3, which would leave the fade with 25 armor and the amount of time it taken for you to pump 10 pistol rounds into him, to swipe you 2-3 times for the kill. Even with weapons #3, which increased damage by 31%, thats still 163.73 points of damage against armor, which some of that damage is going to carry through to the fade's health, leaving it with more armor.
I'd say that's about fair, since there is going to be a multiple number of fades on the battlefield at any given moment, since once the 2nd hive goes up, multiple people are going to be able to afford a fade at once. This means a individual marine is going to need a somewhat significant way to combat a Fade, possibly even more than 1 at once.
Now the way it currently is that light damage does 1/2 damage against armor. That means a full mag of pistol ammo, that still does 250 damage is going to do 62.5 points of damage to a fades armor. That would be significant if you were dealing with a fade with zero armor upgrades, but that quickly changes, as armor 3 triples the fades armor, while Weapons #3 increases damage by 31%. A weapons #3 marine with a pistol doing light damage would do about 81.9 points of damage to a fade with an entire mag full of ammo, which the fade most likely has armor#3, would still have 68.1 points of armor. That's hardly what i would call fair, since the pistol does negligible damage to fades with any amount of armor.
What does all this mean? we've made the pistol significantly less effective in dispatching fades, which i wouldn't have called overpowered before, since pumping a whole mag, which is somewhat hard to do with shifting hitboxes, ping, and increasingly unstable servers after hours of game time that NS2 rounds tend to last. At the same time, we've made pistols more effective towards lifeforms that lack a large amount of armor, namely skulks which have a low amount of armor, making the entire justification behind making the pistol a "finisher" rather than a "starter" practically void. with 250 points of damage, 50 points higher than before, against a skulk that has 70 hp + 5*2(*2 due to light damage modifier) makes the pistol more effective overall against skulks.
All this put together, this has increased the disparity between aliens with a 2nd hive and without a 2nd hive, making tier 1 even more obsolete with its primary class being skulks, and making tier 2 more proficient, with its primary class being fades. This isn't the direction the game should be going at this point in my opinion, the 2nd hive is already critical enough, it unlocking fades, additional energy, and skulk leap, all of which is fine to me, however it does not need to be further intensified past that point. This post has been way longer than it probably should have been, but i wanted to voice my thoughts on this topic clearly.
so this change, even if you don't like it, will not affect 80% of the players. The play style was wrong, now the weapon fits to that. If that change would not have come, people would complain later about it (with that exact argument, pistol is too strong against armor)
Why have the gun if it's just going to be useless?
so here are 3 things that could change in order to make the pistol more useful (treating the cause, not the symptome):
- reduce weapon switch delay from primary to pistol
- increase a bit the bullet spread from rifle, to make the pistol the right choice for big distances
- prevent cancellation of rifle reload by fireing the weapon
now imagine a game with those 3 changes included and tell me the pistol, especially when considering the high damage against health, is useless.
but even without that changes: 250 almost instant light damage is a lot.
The Pistol damage change sounds interesting. One clip of pistol ammo is now capable of dealing up to 400 damage. Since Cysts don't have armour, this could make Pistol the ideal weapon for sniping Cysts. Drifters, Eggs and are Shades are perfect targets waiting to be sniped.
When Pistol damage type was Heavy, it created confusing choices for marines. Since the Pistol was more effective against armoured aliens, marines had to initiate the fight with pistol to maximize their damage. However, the Pistol was a poor weapon for defending against surprise attacks. Shotgun and Rifle make much better travelling companions than the Pistol.
Now, the Pistol deals increased damage against unarmoured foes, making it a better backup weapon than it used to be.
I think another reason why this change is needed is the upcoming (re-)introduction of the Onos. The Pistol is readily available to all marines. Such long ranged, low-tech Heavy damage would undermine the Onos' role as the tank.
Best of both worlds?
So, what the use of the rifle?
It just feels "wrong".
with the rifle you need 0.444 seconds, with the pistol 0,36 (if i calculated now correctly). this asumes that your smash you mouse1 button exactly every 0.1 seconds when using the pistol :)
i would not really say that the pistol is stronger. you can rely on the rifle as well. best way of dealing skulks is of course: one marine uses rifle, another the pistol